Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom

 

Understanding the inestimable value of the Holy Rosary

10/07/2025

Luke 1:26-38 The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, "Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you." But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end."

Someone sent me a little picture – a meme – recently with the title “The First Rosary.” It depicted a cartoon image of Mary and next to her, holding her dress, was a cartoon figure of a toddler Jesus. And above Jesus’ head was a word bubble filled with the words, “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom.” That’s like how we pray “Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary” in reciting the rosary. Jesus prayed the first rosary.

It’s humorous to think of Jesus praying to Mary because after all he is God and the only One he needed to or wanted to pray to was God the Father. And yet, because we believe Jesus was fully human, we must also acknowledge that Jesus often sought, indeed he even needed, the help of his mother Mary. How could Jesus possibly need Mary?

Well, for the first nine months of Jesus’ human life he was in Mary’s womb, an embryo entirely dependent on her to sustain his life. He was literally inseparable from her. Then, of course, for the first two years presumably Mary nursed Jesus. Hence, a woman exclaimed in Lk 11:27, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.”

And Jesus’ worry for the well-being of his mother would be on full display as he hung dying on the Cross. There he said to his beloved disciple, John (speaking about Mary): “Behold your mother.” And we read in that same verse from John 19:27, “And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.”

In a sense, just as Jesus had prayed, “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom,” as an infant at Mary’s breast, so all Jesus beloved disciples – meaning me and you – should do the same. In other words, John 19:27 is the solid scriptural basis for our relationship with Mary as our mother, and further why one of the most beautiful expressions of that mother-child relationship is embodied in the rosary, where we say in effect, “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom.”

In the gospel today we discover that when we pray the rosary we not only imitate Jesus who prayed “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom,” we also imitate the angels. When the Archangel Gabriel appears to the Virgin Mary to announce – that’s where we get the word “Annunciation” – the Incarnation of God becoming Man, he says “Hail Mary, full of grace.”

In Greek, the three words “full of grace” is captured by one word, “kecharitomene”, which means jam-packed to overflowing with grace.” That is, you could not put one more iota of grace into Mary. The Annunciation, as you know, is the first mystery of the rosary. But do you recall the last mystery of the rosary? It is the Coronation of Mary as Queen of heaven and earth.

That means Mary is also the Queen of angels, like the Archangel Gabriel. To get the true picture of the exchange between Gabriel and Mary in Luke 1, we need to understand that Gabriel is not speak to Mary as if she were his inferior but rather as his superior. My nephew Isaac, a 1st Lieutenant in the Army, would say Gabriel addressing Mary is equivalent to a major addressing a general.

And if we translate Luke 1 into family terminology – which is always the most accurate way to understand the reality of all relationships – we would say Mary is not only the Queen of the Angels, but their Mother as well. In a true sense, therefore, Gabriel is saying like the Infant Jesus, “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom.”

Indeed, those words of tender trust and endearment is what the whole universe utters as it beholds the magnificent miracle of Jesus' grace at work in his masterpiece, his prodigy: the sinless, ever-Virgin, Blessed Mary. Mary is the mother of all creation, heaven and earth. That is what we meditate on in the Most Holy Rosary.

Yesterday, a wonderful parishioner named Corinne Rose came to see me. She wanted to give me a rosary she had hand-made and it was stunningly beautiful, with lovely opague green beads and gold chain links between the beads. I was stunned at the elegance of her gift. And I mentioned how appropriate the gift was because yesterday was the day before the feast of the Most Holy Rosary.

I confessed to Corinne that I am hard on rosaries, and they usually don’t last long in my hands because the links inevitably break. She answered with a smile: “Don’t worry, Fr. John, this one can handle your prayers, no matter how hard they are.” She was absolutely right: Mary’s rosary can handle our prayers, just like she could handle the Infant Jesus’ prayers when he said to her, holding her robes: “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom!”

Praised be Jesus Christ!